And so cheap too!

On the more serious side; when will modern governments realize that the world's oldest profession will always be in demand and isn't going anywhere, no matter how illegal it is.

True. But for young girls to have prostitution as their life's ambition, that is a product of their culture. How do you change that?

It is only "young" in our society because we've set the arbitrary age of 18 as being when a person becomes an adult. Most cultures in the world and throughout the history thereof have set their "rites of passage into adulthood" a lot closer to the 13-15 year range. So when we hear about this kind of thing we think how disgusting and savage it is to allow children into that sort of thing, but in reality they aren't children. Our western culture is unique in keeping our young 'childish' for longer than any other culture that I know of; it's quite likely that the 13 and 14 year old girls in the story there had been thinking about their decision for a few years beforehand, and I'd bet they have a lot more 'maturity' than any of the young teens in our society.

Explain it however you want I still say, "ewww."

I'd have to say that not forcing 13 and 14 year olds to make life changing and possibly debilitating decisions is progress and not coddling. I wouldn't say that they have a lot more maturity, I'd say they have a lot less choice.

The problem here is the division between their culture and ours. It should be illegal for outsiders to take advantage of this and the girl's young age is quite disturbing for all of us, but it seems the norm there. My only point here is that we should not be to hasty to judge another culture using our own culture as a standard. Yes, by our standards, it is wrong, wrong on many different levels, but only by our views and judgment, not by theirs.

It seems to be objectively undesirable. Many of the women in the "trade" in that village seem to want something better for their daughters.

Some allowance can be made for cultural differences, but don't assume it's ok just because it's a different culture, that abdicates all moral responsibility.

I hear what you're saying buddha but I just don't agree with it all. Yes, different cultures accept different ages as being adult but let's be honest with ourselves for a moment. Obviously I don't know how old anyone on here is but let's think about whether or not we were prepared at 13 to decide if we would ever want to be married and how many times we have/will change our minds since then. Now lets consider the reasons one of the girls gave for going into prostitution "I wont have to do any housework". Does that sound like mature reasoning? I know you weren't arguing the maturity point, that's not directed at you, just another point in general. As far as culture goes, the decision these girls are making now will mean they can't ever change their minds because they won't have their virginity to offer to their husbands.

as disturbing as this is to our western thinking, appearantly, the rest of the world has an "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed" mentality. while this is sad, its not our place to criticize their customs and beliefs. on the up-side, now all the old perverts know where to score some underage virgin flesh for pennies on the dollar.